Category: television

Bari Weiss makes her CBS debut: a discussion with Erika Kirk

December 15, 2025 • 9:45 am

As I reported before, Bari Weiss, former NYT columnist and then founder of The Free Press, has become Editor-in-Chief of CBS News as the Free Press has joined Paramount, which owns CBS.  I was wary of this for one reason: how this might slant CBS News, though I never watch it anyway. The Free Press is heterodox and, most disturbingly, seems to be soft on religion. Will that infect CBS?

On Saturday night Weiss made her first appearance as a CBS news person, hosting a 45-minute “town hall meeting” with Erika Kirk, the widow of recently assassinated Charlie Kirk, head of  the conservative organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA).  I’ve put the video below.

It was not a propitious interview; in fact, it was pretty boring and repetitive. But that might have been because Erika Kirk seems to be a one-note person, devoted not only to dutifully following the principles of her husband, whom she idolized, but especially devoted to proselytizing about Jesus and God. For religion is one of the main pivots of both Kirk and TPUSA. (Kirk recently issued a book urging us all to rest on the Biblical Sabbath, called Stop, in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life.)

The format of this town hall will probably be the one Weiss uses in her future town halls, and she promises many of them. She interviews a subject, and then select members of the audience (an audience relevant to the speaker’s beliefs) ask questions. You can see the video below.

First, let me note that Kirk is entitled to her beliefs, though I don’t think Weiss did her any favors by allowing her to proselytize ad infinitum in the interview.  Second, I do have immense sympathy for Ms. Kirk, who is left with two small children after her husband’s brutal assassination.  And the joy and glee that came out when Kirk was killed was unseemly, and surely deeply hurtful to Erika. This is not a critique of Erika Kirk, but of the show itself. And I’ll add that though I think Kirk’s murder was abhorrent and reprehensible, I still disagreed with almost all of his political stands, stands instantiated in TPUSA.

What struck me most were two things: Kirk’s evasion of any questions that were “hard”, like one asking her if she condemned Trump’s violent political rhetoric or whether words could constitute violence. Her response was almost invariably to say that the Lord (aka Jesus) will take care of everything.  For example, when she was asked whether she’d condemn Trump’s political rhetoric that was sometimes violent, she simply said that the problem was “so much deeper than just one person.” When asked to respond to Charlie’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act, she simply said that she was in favor of merit. (The Civil Rights Act was not “affirmative action” it was enacted to give blacks their Constitutional rights.)

The other issue was Kirk’s incessant proselytyzing. When asked why, she thought, God/Jesus allowed Kirk to be murdered, she said that it unleashed a big revival (I doubt it), that “the Lord is moving in ways we have no idea, and that God is going to use Charlie’s death to show the world something. Big.  God, she thinks, will use the event to allow her “to bring glory to her and his kingdom.”

The father of a murdered Jewish person asks Erika about growing antisemitism on the Right, and will she condemn individuals spreading that hate? She responds simply that we all need the Lord and Saviour (she’s referring to Jesus, but the guy asking questions was a Jew). She adds, “You cannot separate the Old Testament from the New Testament,” but I doubt she believes that. Kirk himself, though a supporter of Israel, made several remarks that seem overtly antisemitic, and TPUSA is aligned heavily with the Christian right. You do not tout Jesus to Jews.

It is God and Jesus all the way down, and Weiss did not question the foundations of Kirk’s faith, which perhaps would have been an unfair question give Erika’s emotionality.

Kirk reiterates constantly the fact that Charlie only wanted to have conversations, but that’s a bit of dissimulation, for Charlie Kirk was firm in his right-wing ideology and I doubt the conversations would ever have changed his mind. I applaud the desire to have mutual, civil, and nonviolent exchanges of views, but those conversations should be conducted in a way that each person should be able to tell us what evidence would change their minds. Charlie would never change his mind, despite the fact that he sat behind tables with signs making provocative statements and adding . . . “Change my mind.”

To her credit, Weiss and others do try to ask some hard question, like how does she intend to take up Charlie’s mission while maintaining a family. (Answer: the Lord will help her do it, and, anyway TPUSA is not a job, but her family.) When asked how she was able to trust God in the “midst of unfair and immense suffering,” Erika cites the story of Job, who was made by God to suffer for no good reason, but in the end came out okay simply because Job prayed for his friends, which made the angry God change His mind. I have never understood the point of that story, but theologians have tied themselves in knots trying to interpret it in a way that puts God in a good light.

Kirk’s views are all summed up in her answer to Weiss’s question about how she met Charlie. Erika responds that the Lord helped her to find Charlie in a job interview, and Erika asked God if Charlie was the right guy. He was, for, as Erika says, “If I remain in the jetstream of God’s will, then he will provide for you.”  And that’s pretty much her answer to every question in the town hall.

This was not a good first foray of Weiss into t.v. journalism, but surely things will improve as Weiss interviews people who don’t cling to superstition. But the goddiness of this show struck me as overbearing and unevidenced, and I hope religion is not a frequent “Town Hall Topic”.

One more note before I get to the video. Variety weighed in on the Town Hall, and not in a positive way; click to read:

The content:

During a Saturday-night town hall led by Bari Weiss, the recently named editor in chief of CBS News, most of Madison Avenue sought an off-ramp.

The program featured an in-depth interview with Erika Kirk, the CEO of the conservative advocacy organization Turning Point USA and the widow of Charlie Kirk, the group’s former leader. He was assassinated during one of the organization’s events at Utah Valley University, throwing a harsh spotlight on the political and cultural divides present in the U.S.

The event marked a new offering from CBS News. The organization does not typically host town halls or debates on trending issues or with newsmakers. And the choice of Weiss as moderator also raised eyebrows, because in most modern TV-news organizations, senior editorial executives remain off camera, rather than appearing in front of it.

More may be on the way. During the program, Weiss told viewers that “CBS is going to have many more conversations like this in the weeks and months ahead, so stay tuned. More town halls. More debates. More talking about the things that matter.” That would suggest CBS is planning to devote more hours to the programs.

The news special aired at 8 p.m. on Saturday, one of the least-watched hours in broadcast TV. And that may have contributed to a relative dearth of top advertisers appearing to support the show. During the hour, commercial breaks were largely filled with spots from direct-response advertisers, including the dietary supplement SuperBeets; the home-repair service HomeServe.com; and CarFax, a supplier of auto ownership data. Viewers of the telecast on WCBS, CBS’ flagship station in New York, even saw a commercial for Chia Pet, the terra-cotta figure that sprouts plant life after a few weeks.

Now, after that long introduction, here’s the video. Feel free and encouraged to weigh in below.

The Free Press is joining Paramount and CBS

October 6, 2025 • 9:25 am

These rumors have been floating around for a while, and now they’re verified: The Free Press has been bought by Paramount, of which CBS television is the flagship property, though apparently the website is to remain unaltered. (Remember, the kids may read the Internet but they do NOT watch CBS!)

The Free Press (“TFP”) is of course a website, founded by Bari Weiss when she found that she could not write what she wanted at the New York Times. And the site has been wildly successful, morphing into a more centrist version of the NYT, and printing things that wouldn’t appear in the MSM: works by, for example, Coleman Hughes, Uri Berliner, Abigail Shrier, Jon Haidt, and Matti Friedman. And there are more personal takes that are unique to the site, e.g., Nellie Bowles’s “TGIF” features, Shrier’s pieces on gender and the “therapization” of modern youth, and Berliner’s indictment of National Public Radio.  I’m glad to subscribe, but now, given this announcement (click on screenshot below), I’m worried that the website won’t be nearly as engaging. We are told not to worry about that.

A few excerpts from Bari’s piece (my bolding):

We’re a news organization, so I’ll get right to it: This morning, The Free Press is joining Paramount.

This move is a testament to many things: The Free Press team; the vision of Paramount’s new leaders; the luck of starting an independent media company at the right moment; and the courage of my colleagues to leave behind old worlds to build a new one.

But, above all, it’s a testament to you, our subscribers.

From day one, the promise—and the business proposition—of this publication was simple: We would marry the quality of the old world to the freedom of the new. We would seek the truth and tell it plainly. And we would treat readers like adults capable of making their own choices.

So many people told us this was no longer possible. That the premise of a media company built on trust rather than partisanship was, at best, a relic from the past—and, at worst, a fantasy that never was. That the internet killed journalism. That there simply weren’t enough Americans out there in search of media driven by honesty, independence, and integrity.

You proved them wrong. You demonstrated that there’s a market for honest journalism. And you’ve given us a mandate to pursue that mission from an even bigger platform.

I’ll continue to lead this incredible community alongside my tireless team, remaining CEO and editor-in-chief. But I’ll be taking on another title, too.

As of today, I am editor-in-chief of CBS News, working with new colleagues on the programs that have impacted American culture for generations—shows like 60 Minutes and Sunday Morning—and shaping how millions of Americans read, listen, watch, and, most importantly, understand the news in the 21st century.

. . . If you have been here from the start, you might have questions. Wasn’t The Free Press started precisely because the old media institutions had failed? Isn’t the whole premise of this publication that we need to build anew? Why flee The New York Times only to head back into another legacy institution?

If the illiberalism of our institutions has been the story of the last decade, we now face a different form of illiberalism emanating from our fringes. On the one hand, an America-loathing far left. On the other, a history-erasing far right. These extremes do not represent the majority of the country, but they have increasing power in our politics, our culture, and our media ecosystem.

Overlooked by all these so-called interlocutors are the enormous numbers of smart, politically mixed, pragmatic Americans. The people who believe, unapologetically, in the American project.

This is the actual mainstream. These people are the overwhelming majority of the country. And they are being ill-served.

As proud as we are of the 1.5 million subscribers who have joined under the banner of The Free Press—and we are astonished at that number—this is a country with 340 million people. We want our work to reach more of them, as quickly as possible.

This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity allows us to do that. It gives The Free Press a chance to help reshape a storied media organization—to help guide CBS News into a future that honors those great values that underpin The Free Press and the best of American journalism. And in doing so, to bring our mission to millions of people.

. . .So on a practical level, what does this news mean for your Free Press subscription? Two words: more and better.

Our subscribers will still get the daily journalism they rely on: investigative reports, features, columns, podcasts, and more. And The Free Press, which will remain independent, will be growing even faster within Paramount. We’ll be investing heavily in this community, and so many of the things we’ve long dreamed about will become possible much more quickly.

What does this mean for CBS News? It means a redoubled commitment to great journalism. It means building on a storied legacy—and bringing that historic newsroom into 2025 and beyond. Most of all, it means working tirelessly to make sure CBS News is the most trusted news organization in the world.

I’m betting that the subscription price will go up, though, with the infusion of cash from Paramount, there’s really no reason for it to rise. We’ll see. And given that TFP will be part of the Paramount venture, how can it remain independent? Will Bari Weiss still be connected with both CBS News and TFP? If so, it cannot be independent.

As far as the slant of CBS News will change, I have no idea. My regular station is NBC News, which shows signs of wokeness—but signs that aren’t pervasive enough to disturb me. How will CBS News change? I do like 60 Minutes when I watch it, and can’t think of any real bias there. How will that show change? And will we get to see Free Press writers like Shrier and Hughes on television?

So congrats to TFP, which has finally attained the ultimate power over at least one MSM venue. I can’t help but worry about a few things, but hey, that’s me.

Bill Maher (entire show)

April 19, 2025 • 8:00 am

YouTube will almost certainly take down this video of Bill Maher’s entire show from yesterday, so I’m putting it up early today. Listen while you can! I’ve given the schedule below.

Intro (Maher monologue): 0-7:17

Douglas Murray: 7:17-18:15 (He talks about the topic of his new book, On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization.

Panel: Author and libertarian Matt Welch and Democratic Senator (Minnesota) Tina Smith: 18:17-47:03

Second comedy bit (Maher monologue; “New Rules”): 47:06-57:51

Douglas Murray is always good value, especially when he talks about Israel and Palestine (as he does here), and the “New Rules” bit is pretty good. They should have given him more time.

WELL, THEY TOOK IT DOWN. But you can at least hear Maher’s “New Rule” segment, which is about “The Not-Working Class”

and here’s the short intro:

and here is the non-broadcasted “overtime”. The first topic of discussion is the UK Supreme Court’s new ruling that there are two sexes and no more.

Bari Weiss interviews Lucy Aharish, the first Arab Muslim presenter on mainstream Israeli t.v.

February 13, 2024 • 12:30 pm

Lucy Aharish is the first Arab Muslim television presenter on mainstream Israeli t.v.  Here’s a video, highly touted on the Free Press site, in which Bari Weiss interviews Aharish for an hour: “This Muslim Israeli woman is the hope of the Middle East“.

I’m not sure what the title means by “hope of the Middle East,” unless it buttresses Aharish’s claim that Muslims who commit or even approve of terrorism are not “real Muslims”, and thus there is hope for peace and comity between Israelis and “real” Muslims in Palestine.

A bit about Aharish from Wikipedia:

As of 2018, Aharish serves as a news anchor for Reshet 13. She was previously a morning anchor on a current-affairs show for its predecessor Channel 2, a presenter of the Evening Edition for i24NEWS, a news presenter and reporter for Channel 10, a co-host for Radio 99, a late-night co-host for Channel 1, as well as a co-host for Kan 11.

The interview has its ups and downs, but I think it’s worth watching for two reasons. First, it shows how even Israeli Arabs are subject to racism (Aharish tells several stories, including her failure to get paid for a speaking engagement simply because of her religion and ethnicity).  But she also claims that Israel is not an “apartheid” state, citing those Israeli Arab Muslims who have risen to high places (both of her sisters have good jobs, and of course Israeli Arabs do occupy high places, including the Knesset and the Supreme Court). So apparently Aharish believes that although there’s residual racism in Israel, it doesn’t affect Israeli Muslims’ opportunities or life prospects. (I’m not quite sure how, if there’s racism, it can NOT play out in differential treatment!) But it’s certainly true that Israel is a ton less racist than Palestine or other Arab countries—places where Jews often can’t even live, much less rise to decent positions.

At many points Aharish is moved to tears, especially when saying things like, “Hamas murdered in the sense of compassion in me, the humanity in me.” She argues that after the October 7 attacks she had lost empathy for the Palestinians, but now is realizing that  “Israel cannot afford to lose its humanity” and emphasizes the need to make the next generation of inhabitants of Gaza and West Bank become neighbors to the extent that they could forge a peace with Israel.

As I said, I find the most dubious claim to be Aharish’s insistence that terrorists, as well as those Arab Muslims in Palestine and other Arab countries who sympathize with terrorists, are not genuine Muslims. She argues that this extremism “is not Islam.  This is not being a Muslim. This is being a monster.” But the polls taken in Palestine and other Arab countries show the contrary: a huge proportion of inhabitants, if not most of them, approved of the October 7 massacre and don’t want Israel to exist. And, of course, Sam Harris has argued that this form of extremism is really inherent in Islam. All you have to do is to read the Qur’an to see its emphasis on killing apostates, infidels and Jews. To be sure, the Bible is pretty genocidal, too, but the difference is that Christianity has now largely been stripped of its homicidal dicta while Islam has not.

It is, I think, a debatable matter of whether most Muslims fall into Aharish’s definition of “extremists.” Sometimes it sounds as if she’s making a virtue of necessity.

But, as I said, this is worth listening to. For a shorter take on her views, also showing her emotionality (a good thing, one rarely seen in an anchorperson), see this CNN video.

Here’s the intro to the interview at the Free Press.

And the video:

FIRE puts ads on television

July 13, 2023 • 9:00 am

Imagine my surprise when I was watching the NBC Evening News the last two nights and each program included a different ad for the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). FIRE is perhaps the most visible and efficacious of all free speech groups—the ACLU has become hopeless—and I found these ads heartening, though it must have cost the organization a pile.

I found a way to embed them here, and I’ll put up four ads I found on the Internet. They’re only 30 seconds to one minute long, so watch them all. Go free speech!

This is one that I saw, which I think is very good. I have no idea whether it will touch the average American.

On comedy and free expression.  There are a few scenes of disgruntled audience members attacking comedians.

I particularly like this one, as it shows two guys (one is Colin Kaepernick) who have two opposing views but can get along, each expressing his feelings in public.  I particularly like the last words of the former Green Beret: “We have a right to speak out; that’s what we fought for.”

And a conservative:

 

Dawkins interviewed by Piers Morgan

March 31, 2023 • 11:30 am

I found out about this recent appearance by Richard Dawkins on Piers Morgan‘s show via the tweet below. Reader Luana, who sent me that tweet, says that many people online are now going after Richard, accusing him of cowardice by refusing to give his opinion on matters Islamic. I’ve put the entire interview below and you can judge for yourself.  Morgan, by the way, is a Tory, but not as conservative as a hardwired American right-winger. He’s also religious.

Below is the whole 47-minute video. Topics discussed including cancel culture, evolutionary biology, and how did something come from nothing (this plays into Morgan’s religious sentiments), Morgan asks Dawkins what happened before the Big Bang, which of course nobody knows. (Dawkins says, “it doesn’t help to postulate something complicated [God] at the outset.”)

Morgan claims that as a believer, he needs an alternative to a purely naturalistic origin of the universe, and sees that as a telling point against atheism. Dawkins’s response, “Science take a pride in admitting what they don’t know”—a good response given that Pier’s own “theory”—that Catholicism is the true faith—has no evidence at all in its favor. I think Richard should have asked Morgan, “What evidence do you have for the Catholic god you believe in?” or “How do you know that YOUR own ‘theory’ is right?”

After each man has stated his position on God and the afterlife, the conversation moves to the recent movement of the woke to purify language, especially in biology, including discussion of sex. Here Dawkins and Morgan agree (and so do I). Dawkins says, “There are two sexes—and that’s all there is to it.”

The discussion moves on to how “perceived scientific wisdom” can change, as in the covid pandemic. Morgan asks Dawkins to respond to those who use these shifts in position to denigrate science itself, and Dawkins again has a good response (I think Morgan agrees with him, though I’m not sure.) This brings up the “culture of nastiness” on social media, and then artificial intelligence (“can a machine be sentient?”)—seemingly the most important topic of today’s intellectual discussions.

The discussion of Islam begins at 30:28, when Morgan reminds Dawkins that he, Richard, said that fundamentalist Islam is “one of the great threats” to humanity.  Dawkins explains why he adheres to this, but rejects the idea that he’s an “Islamophobe”; he simply objects to the tenets of fundamentalist Islam like female genital mutilation and the denigration of music and dancing. As Dawkins says, correctly, “Muslims are the biggest victims of Islamism.”

Dawkins then refuses to give an opinion of whether a British “ISIS bride” should be allowed back to Britain, saying that he hasn’t studied the situation thoroughly enough. He doesn’t want to talk about the threats that he himself gets, which may have given rise to the tweet above, but I understand that Richard doesn’t like to discuss threats to public figures, including himself, because he thinks it just encourages nut cases and wannabees who might follow suit.

At 34 minutes in, Dawkins reveals who he thinks is the smartest person he’s ever met, but I’ll let you go to 34:15 to hear the answer.

Other questions include what does Dawkins hope to achieve now that he’s 82, does he have any great unfulfilled ambitions, and so on. He does mention the topic of the book he’s writing now, which is going to be, I think, scientifically controversial because of its claim that you can read off the ancestral environments of any species by reading its DNA. (I have issues with that idea, though I will read the book to see what it says before weighing in.)

At 36:30, Morgan asks him, “What is the one question you’d most like answered before you die?” You can hear the answer for yourself. (Dawkins actually mentions several questions.) During the show’s last bit, Morgan peppers Richard with personal questions like, “Are you a romantic?”, “Do you get a bad rap?”, “What is the one thing you’d like to be known for?” and so on.

It’s a good interview, and I have to say that I think the tweet above is misguided: there’s simply no indication that Dawkins evinces cowardice in his discussion of Islam or religion. In fact, it’s one of the better interviews with Dawkins I’ve heard. Morgan asks provocative questions, but he’s not out to “get” Richard, and the only agenda he seems to have is to hold onto his Catholicism.

How was the first bit of the U.S./Holocaust documentary?

September 19, 2022 • 7:15 am

Yesterday I noted that the new documentary directed by Ken Burns, Lynne Nozick, and Sarah Botstein, “The Holocaust and the U.S.” had its first airing on PBS last night (there will be three two-hour presentations).  There were a fair number of pre-show comments, some of them degenerating into an argument about the U.S.’s departure from Afghanistan, for crying out loud!

I missed the show because of my ridiculously early bedtime, mandated by the insomnia doc, and because someone with a sleep disorder is not supposed to watch the tube before bed. But I will watch it when they put it online on September 18. Meanwhile, I am sleeping better now, at the price of giving up wine with dinner. That will resume when I’m better.

In the meantime, how was the show? (The first episode is called “The Golden Door”, covering from the beginning to 1938.)

To comment below, you have to have watched the show! I just discovered that you (or perhaps only those in Chicago) can watch the first episode, “The Golden Door”, free by clicking on the screenshot below. B (After September 18, you can watch all the episodes free online, but only for a few days.)

The photo, from the beginning of the episode, shows the Frank family, with Anne on the left, Margot on the right, and their mother Edith in the middle. The photo was snapped by Otto Frank, the only one who survived the war.